Our homeschooling page explains how we plan a programme around your child, how sessions are scheduled around family life and what affects the price. It's a good place to compare a tutor-led programme properly with the other routes.
Homeschooling can cost very little or a great deal, and the difference comes down to who does the teaching. A parent who teaches with free online lessons, library books and a few workbooks may spend little beyond printing, outings and the internet connection the household already pays for. A family that pays a tutor for several subjects each week, or hands most of the timetable to a tutor-led programme, can spend thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds a year.
Either way, the cost usually falls on the family. In England, government guidance says parents who home educate take on full financial responsibility for their child's education, including the cost of any exams. Families in Wales and Scotland are in a similar position, although the help councils offer varies from place to place.
Below, we work through the realistic routes, from parent-led learning to full-time tuition. For each one, we show what it costs using published prices and simple, clearly labelled calculations, so you can build a realistic budget for your own child. We also cover the costs families tend to forget, how spending changes at GCSE and A-level, and what to think about if your child has special educational needs.
The routes aren't different prices for the same thing. They involve different amounts of teaching, planning and responsibility, so we compare what you get as well as what you pay. Our own prices are in here too, because a fair comparison has to show the top of the range as well as the bottom.
When you choose to educate your child at home in England, the cost is yours. The Department for Education's guidance for parents says you must be prepared to "assume full financial responsibility" for your child's education, "including bearing the cost of any public examinations". It also lists books, paper, IT and other equipment, educational visits and sporting activities as costs to plan for.
Councils have no duty to fund elective home education, but some offer help at their discretion. The same guidance says some local authorities may help with exam costs or run support groups for home-educating families. They can also consider support where a child's special educational needs are being met at home, though even then it's up to them. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 will require councils to give advice to home-educating families on their new registers who ask for it. That part wasn't in force when we checked in October 2026, and it's a duty to advise, not to pay. Your council's home education page is the place to find out what's available locally.
One option costs families nothing. Some further education colleges take home-educated 14 to 16 year olds for part of the week, and the Department for Education's guidance for councils says this comes at no cost to parents. Colleges don't have to offer these places, so it's worth asking early.
Home education is also different from education that a council arranges and pays for. EOTAS, or education otherwise than at school, is where a council arranges the education set out in a child's EHC plan outside school. Councils must also arrange education for children who can't attend school because of their health, and the council funds it, not the family. If your child has an EHC plan, the difference between home education and EOTAS matters a great deal for cost, and our guide to EOTAS explains how it works.
Child Benefit isn't affected by home education while your child is under 16. After that, it can continue until 20 if your young person stays in approved education. GOV.UK lists home education among the types that can count, subject to the rules on full-time study. HMRC's own guidance adds that home education after 16 generally counts only if it began before your child turned 16, so check your situation with HMRC before relying on it.
Education is devolved, so the details differ across the UK. In Wales, the Welsh Government told the Senedd in October 2024 that parents must be ready to pay for their child's education, including exams. It added that councils are encouraged to help where resources permit. In Scotland, the Scottish Government's home education guidance says councils aren't required to meet exam costs for home-educated candidates. In Northern Ireland, the Education Authority's home education team offers advice, so ask it what support exists. The costs below are a useful reference wherever you live, but the funding rules described are England's unless we say otherwise.
Most families sit somewhere on a spectrum, from a parent doing almost all the teaching to a tutor doing most of it. The routes below aren't fixed packages, and plenty of families move between them as their child grows. What changes along the way is how much teaching time you're paying someone else to provide.
Here the parent plans and teaches, and the main resource is their time. Free materials cover a lot of ground. Oak National Academy offers free, national curriculum-aligned lessons and resources from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4, although Oak says its resources aren't designed to replace contact with teachers. BBC Bitesize has free videos, guides and quizzes from Key Stage 1 through to post-16, and joining your local library costs nothing.
Direct spending on this route can stay low, but it isn't zero. You'll still need paper, ink, stationery, some books of your own and money for outings, although plenty of museums are free to visit, including London's Natural History Museum. Travel and special exhibitions cost extra. This route works best when a parent has the time and confidence to teach. It gets harder as subjects become more specialised, which is often when families start paying for help.
Many families keep the parent as teacher but buy in structure, such as textbooks and workbooks, a subscription to an online platform, group classes, clubs and sport. This suits parents who are happy to teach but would rather not plan everything from scratch. Spending here depends almost entirely on what you choose, so the most useful exercise is to price your own list rather than rely on someone else's average. Our guide to choosing a homeschool curriculum can help you decide what's worth buying.
Structured distance-learning courses sit at the top of this route. As one example, Wolsey Hall Oxford's April 2026 fee list prices most of its IGCSE courses at £700 to £1,395 each when paid in full. The price depends on the subject and how many courses you take. Its fees include course books and tutor feedback on assignments, but not exam entry fees. Full-time online schools go further again, with timetabled lessons and annual fees, so compare exactly what each one includes before you sign up.
This route suits families who are happy teaching most subjects but want expert help with one, for example maths or a science at secondary level. Others bring in a tutor for a particular topic or the run-up to exams. The parent stays in charge and a tutor fills the gap.
Rates vary with the subject, the level, the tutor's experience and whether lessons are online or in person, and our guide to tutoring costs in London sets out typical ranges. As a reference point, our one-to-one tuition starts from £75 an hour. At that rate, a block of ten one-hour sessions before an exam would cost £750.
Some families build the week around regular tuition, perhaps a weekly lesson in three or four subjects, with the parent covering the rest and holding the plan together. This often makes sense in the GCSE years, when specialist subject knowledge matters more and your child is working to an exam specification.
Costs climb quickly because every subject adds hours. At £75 an hour, one hour a week in a single subject across a 38-week school year comes to £2,850, and three subjects come to £8,550. How often your child sees a tutor drives the cost on this route, so it's worth deciding on purpose rather than by default. Whatever the mix, the parent remains responsible for the education as a whole, even when tutors teach most of it.
At the far end of the spectrum, tutors teach most or all of the timetable and the provider plans the programme around your child. Families consider this route for different reasons, such as a child who has been struggling at school, additional needs that call for a tailored day, or an exam year with gaps to close quickly.
It's also the route where it pays to be clear about what you're comparing. A tutor-led programme isn't a more expensive version of a workbook. You're paying for teaching time, subject expertise and someone else planning and adjusting the work, which is a different service from buying materials and teaching them yourself.
Our homeschooling programmes run online across the UK and can last anywhere from two weeks to a full year, typically with up to five hours of contact a day. They start with a conversation with the family and a look at your child's needs, followed by a timetable built around them, with regular check-ins and half-termly meetings with parents. Our daily rate starts at £300, and the total depends on the number of hours, your child's age, the number of students and travel requirements.
That £300 is a starting rate, not a package price. A two-week programme of ten teaching days would start at £3,000. One day a week through a school year would start at £11,400, and five days a week for a full school year at £57,000. Those figures show scale, not quotes, and the price you'd actually pay depends on your child's timetable and needs. Whichever provider you talk to, ask how many hours a day the rate covers and what else is included.
The table puts these routes side by side. The tutoring and programme figures are calculations from our published starting rates, used because they're prices we can state accurately. Other providers charge more or less, so swap in the rates you're quoted.
All the figures are illustrations in pounds, based on our published starting rates, so real quotes may be higher. A school year is taken as 38 weeks, matching the 190 days that council-maintained schools in England must open each year. Tutoring assumes one-hour sessions. The programme rows use a £300 day, and our published rate doesn't fix how many hours a day that covers. None of the figures includes exam fees, books, equipment or travel, and the last column simply divides the yearly total by 12 to help with monthly planning. Prices were checked in October 2026.
In the primary years, many parents feel able to teach most subjects themselves, and good free and low-cost materials are easy to find. Spending at this stage often goes on books, practical materials and activities more than on tuition.
From Year 7, subjects become more specialised. Science needs practical work, languages benefit from a fluent speaker and maths moves quickly, so this is a natural point to consider paying for help in a subject or two.
The GCSE years add a new kind of cost. Your child needs a specification to follow in each subject, and if they're sitting exams, you pay private candidate entry fees through an exam centre. We checked three London centres in October 2026. At their prices, English Language, English Literature, maths, Combined Science and one other subject came to roughly £1,250 to £1,700 in entry fees, before travel and extras. That's six grades, because Combined Science counts as two. Some subjects also have coursework or practical parts that limit which centres will take a home-educated candidate. Our guide to sitting GCSEs as a private candidate covers the fees and the process in detail.
A-levels raise the bar again. The subject knowledge is specialised and fewer parents can teach it themselves. Science A-levels also have a practical element that private candidates need to arrange through a centre, which can add to the cost. At this stage, tutoring or structured courses often carry more of the teaching.
If your child has special educational needs, the cost of home education depends less on the label and more on what your child needs day to day. Some children do well with a parent teaching from ordinary materials at their own pace. Others need more one-to-one teaching, specialist resources or regular support from someone experienced with their needs, and those are the parts that cost money.
The funding picture has a few extra layers. If your child has an EHC plan and you're providing suitable education at home, Department for Education guidance says the council has no duty to arrange the special educational provision in the plan. Councils can still choose to help with costs that arise from a child's special needs. If the council itself arranges your child's education outside school, that's EOTAS, and the council funds the provision in the plan. If you're not sure where your child stands, our guide to EHC plans and how to apply explains the process.
You don't need to pay for a private assessment to home educate a child with SEN. An EHC needs assessment is requested through your council, and a private assessment is an option rather than a requirement.
Specialist tutoring is one form of support among several. Our SEN tutors work with children with ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, processing difficulties, autism and PDA. The daily rate for SEN support also starts at £300, and the total depends on the same factors as our homeschooling programmes. For the practical side of teaching at home, see our guide to homeschooling a child with SEN.
The largest cost of home education often isn't something you buy. Government guidance makes the point that costs can be indirect and gives lost income as the example. If a parent cuts their hours or stops work to teach, put that change in the budget alongside books and tutors, because for some families it will be the biggest number in it.
Time is the other hidden cost. Planning lessons, finding resources, marking work and supervising a child who can't yet be left alone all count, even when no money changes hands. Paying for tutoring buys some of that time back.
Day-to-day household costs shift as well. With your child at home all day, bills such as heating and food can creep up, and if your child gets free school meals, lunches become a household cost again. There can be savings too, since uniform, school trips and the daily journey to school may drop out of the budget. Transport costs change rather than disappear, because groups, activities and exam centres all involve travel.
The quickest way to a realistic figure is to work from your child's own year, not from an average. This checklist covers the costs families most often need to plan for, though few will need everything on it.
One-off or occasional costs
Recurring costs
Indirect costs
Then turn the list into a plan:
There's no single answer to how much homeschooling costs, but there is an answer for your family once you know who will teach what. A parent-led approach with free resources can be a perfectly sound way to educate a child, and paying more doesn't guarantee a better education. Paid support earns its place when it gives your child teaching they couldn't otherwise get, at a level and pace that suits them.
A few questions usually show where that point is. Can you teach each subject confidently at your child's level, and do you have the hours alongside work and family life? Is your child heading into exams that need specialist teaching? Does your child need a different kind of teaching from the kind you can offer? If the answers point to one or two gaps, occasional or weekly tutoring may be all you need. If they point to most of the timetable, a tutor-led programme is worth pricing carefully against the other routes.
No, although the direct costs can be low. In England, government guidance says parents who home educate take on full financial responsibility for their child's education, so they pay for materials, tutoring, activities and exams. A parent-led approach using free online lessons and the library keeps spending down, while regular tutoring and tutor-led programmes cost considerably more.
Not as a rule. Councils in England have no general duty to fund home education. Some help at their discretion, for example with exam costs or support groups, and they can consider help where a child's special needs are being met at home. EOTAS works differently, because there the council arranges and funds the education in a child's EHC plan.
It depends on the subject, the level, the tutor and whether lessons are online or in person. With HRB Education, one-to-one tuition starts from £75 an hour, while full homeschooling programmes are priced by the day from £300. For wider market rates by subject and level, see our London tutoring cost guide.
Not while your child is under 16, because Child Benefit at that age doesn't depend on going to school. From 16, it can continue until 20 if your young person is in approved education. Home education can count, subject to the full-time study rules, but HMRC's guidance says it generally needs to have started before your child turned 16.
Sometimes. In England, exam costs fall to parents, but some councils help at their discretion, so ask yours before entries open. In Wales, the Welsh Government encourages councils to help where resources permit, and in Scotland, councils aren't required to meet exam costs for home-educated candidates.
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